Tuesday, January 27, 2015

What It Takes to Be an Expert Grammar User: Daniel Tammet

Stephen Krashen

The case of Daniel Tammet
became well known after a documentary, Brainman, was made. It has been
shown world-wide since May, 2005. Tammet suffers from savant syndrome, a form
of autism characterized by “an obsessive need to order and routine” (Tammet,
2007) and in his case, and extraordinary ability to deal with numbers. The
documentary featured his linguistic abilities: After ten days of study of
Icelandic, Tammet was able to converse in the language with two native speakers
for 15 minutes. Tammet now knows ten languages.

Much of his ability in language
acquisition is, without question, really a profound ability in language
learning, not acquisition: Tammet has an incredible memory. He holds the
European and British record for memorizing pi, at 22,514 digits. (This is,
incidentally, sixth in the world. The world record is held by Chao Lu, 67,890;
see http://www.pi-world-ranking-list.com).

It is clear, however, that he
uses both learning and acquisition: While studying Lithuanian, while working as
an English teacher in Lithuania, he worked with a teacher: “I wrote words down
as I learned them to help me visualize and remember them” (conscious learning)
and read children’s books . . . (acquisition)” (Tammet, 2007, p. 134). (Parenthetical notes
added by SK.)

When he started working on
Icelandic, he read texts aloud so his teacher could check his pronunciation
(conscious learning), but he also stated that “the large amount of reading
helped me to develop an intuitive sense of the language’s grammar
(acquisition)” (pp. 208-209).

“When I’m learning a language
there are a number of things that I consider essential materials to begin with.
The first is a good-size dictionary (conscious learning). I also need a variety
of texts in the language, such as children’s books, stories and newspaper
articles, because I prefer to learn words within whole sentences to help give
me a feeling for how the language works (acquisition)” (p. 161).

Tammet has set up a website,
selling lessons in beginning and intermediate Spanish and French
(http://www.optimnem.co.uk). An inspection of the syllabi, available without
charge, reveals that the focus of each lesson is a point of grammar.

Before we conclude from this
case that the best approach is a combination of acquisition and learning, we
have to remember that Daniel Tammet has memorized pi to 22,514 digits. A safer
conclusion is that conscious learning works well for those with the prodigious
mental powers of Daniel Tammet.